I live in the middle of suburbia, where scenes such as this do not exist. Good? Bad? Who knows . . . the myriad and mixture of people and activities is so much fun to watch, I could sit here all day, sipping coffee and sneaking a pic or two.

The Canonet QL17 is a nice, solid rangefinder, which has an “A” for automatic, as well as the capability to be manually set in all areas. I shot a roll of Agfa Vista 200, mostly on “A” to see how well it works. Overall, I think I may prefer to set my exposure factors manually as a lot of the images were a bit blurry or soft. I’ve got some film someplace that may be a bit sharper, shot a year or so ago, that I need to find in order to do some comparisons. This was taken in the food area of The Grove in L.A.

The other night we hit the coast … the fog was low and the sky was grey and we were chilled and cold. Trust me when I say California is not all sunshine and balmy breezes! Mark Twain supposedly said, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” It’s true for points south as well.

Having a phone camera can be rather nice . . . not always the best shot, but sometimes the most candid and discreetly taken. Everyone has a cell phone, and everyone has cameras in their phones (for the most part). In bad light, blur; in good light, glare. And in perfect conditions, sometimes it is nearly impossible to tell it was taken by a phone.